“NOT A MILITARY COUP; IT IS A REVOLUTION”

EGYPT – People were waiting all day for the end of the ultimatum the army had set for President Mohammed Morsi and to see the revolution process to continue. Late in the afternoon, hundreds of thousands of anti-Morsi protesters again flocked to Tahrir Square and the presidential palace.

Eventually, the chief of the armed forces, General Abdel-Fatah Al-Sisi, announced that he had suspended the constitution and would nominate the head of the constitutional court, Adli Mansour, as interim president on Thursday. Both presidential and parliamentary elections would follow shortly afterwards and a transitional cabinet would be named. The crowds erupted into ear-splitting cries of joy, Tahrir Square turned into a huge party. Fireworks were let off, people hugged each other everywhere, crying tears of joy.

Sherif, a university professor, “I’m so happy that Egyptians of all classes are here on the square. You could say that we have been freed from the radicals. The Muslim Brotherhood has caused many serious problems.”

He emphasized that they are all Egyptians, not just Muslims or Christians and that, for at least 7,000 years, they have all been drinking the same water and breathing the same air.

All around Sherif, the crowds were jumping. One man was down on his knees thanking God, the man next to him was fighting back the tears. People waved thousands of flags, blowing their whistles and vuvuzelas.

A military helicopter circled the square, dropping little Egyptian flags into the crowds who chanted “the people and the military are one.” A woman with a headscarf ran to the man next to her and shouted “the young people have freed us a second time!”

Sisi stated that the military acted to fulfill the popular will, following days of vast protests against Morsi’s rule.

“We will build an Egyptian society that is strong and stable, that will not exclude any one of its sons,” he said.

He spoke of his “historic responsibility” in front of a panel of Egyptians representing what was intended to be full spectrum of Egyptian life, including the Coptic pope, the country’s most senior Muslim cleric, and leading secular politician Mohamed ElBaradei.

Symbolically, the panel also included a representative of the Tamarod campaign, the mass movement that inspired the millions-strong protests on Sunday that prompted Morsi’s departure.

The leader of Egypt’s opposition Social Democratic Party said that the ouster of president Mohammed Morsi was a revolution, not a coup. “What happened today in Cairo and Alexandria and all the cities and villages in Egypt, was a real, popular revolution against Muslim Brotherhood rule. This was not a military coup, it was a popular revolution aided by the army. We don’t want and won’t accept military rule. The role of the army and police will be to preserve internal and border security. Political work will be led by civil forces,” Abu al-Ghar said.

Events indicated a rehabilitation of not just the army – whose chequered 15-month tenure in office between February 2011 and June 2012 prompted unprecedented criticism of the military – but the police, whose reputation took a battering in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising. The police piggybacked on the popularity of the protests, releasing two statements backing the protests against the president.

Islamists saw Morsi’s removal as a betrayal of democracy. But for many in Tahrir it was a victory for people power. Opposition to Morsi had floundered until the founding of the Tamarod campaign in April. But the leaderless Tamarod, which gathered millions of signatures calling for Morsi’s removal in recent weeks, built momentum for 30 June’s street protests, setting the stage for Morsi’s departure.